


NOUN IN THE FLAT

by LieutenantSaavik



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: 'god (good omens)' is a tag. i made it. it's here now, M/M, but the 'things' is just crowley's brain, i'm not convinced he does, if he's got one, things don't work properly even after you've given them a good thumping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 11:45:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19172629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LieutenantSaavik/pseuds/LieutenantSaavik
Summary: "Don’t,” Aziraphale says firmly, “Stop me now. I’m moving in with you.”“And I’m,” says Crowley wearily, “A racing car passing by like Lady Godiva. I’m gonna go, go, go—”“Home?” Aziraphale suggests.“Yeah,” says Crowley, faintly.  “Home.”





	NOUN IN THE FLAT

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oscarisaac](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oscarisaac/gifts).



> this is set, like, one week-ish after almostgeddon. they're Dating dating now, and discussing what happened the night of the bodyswap. but badly, of course. cuz they're dumb.

“Oh, Crowley,” says Aziraphale, sighing into the sunlight in St. James Park, “Your flat was so dark.”

Crowley shrugs. “Dark is safe,” he replies. He gestures vaguely. “It’s got windows.”

“Of course it does, but, well.” Aziraphale shifts himself more comfortably on the bench. Their conversation is so odd it doesn’t seem appropriate to happen in daylight. It’s almost banal. “Not much of a view.”

“I disagree.” (He doesn’t actually remember what the view is.)

“Hm,” says Aziraphale. (He doesn’t remember either. Memory has been strange lately, coming and going, focusing and unfocusing like a static-filled radio or large, blinking eyes.)

He’s quiet for a while. “Do you enjoy living there?”

“Eh.”

“Would you consider redecorating?”

“Why?” Crowley asks. “I’ve got the plants.”

“I just thought, if I’m to be spending more time over there--”

“Shut it,” advises Crowley, almost sagely. “You turned me down when I asked if you wanted to live with me; don’t bring it up again.”

“I’m reconsidering,” says Aziraphale clippedly.

Crowley turns to him, already wearing half a smile. “You’re what?”

“I said I’m reconsider _ing_ , not ‘I’ve reconsidered.’”

“You don’t like it, though,” Crowley tells him, stating a fact. “You don’t like the flat.”

“Not particularly,” Aziraphale agrees. “I don’t think it’s quite… you.”

“Not quite me?” Now that’s a bloody odd statement, Crowley thinks, because it implies a number of things that could be interpreted anywhere in the spectrum from ‘presumptuous’ to ‘pretentious,’ not that he knew what either of those two words meant. 

“Not quite you,” Aziraphale repeats, as if that should clarify things.

“Would you,” Crowley’s hand creeps along the top of the bench, almost to the angel’s shoulder, “Care to elaborate on that?”

“No, not _really_ ,” Aziraphale frets, eyeing Crowley’s not-so-subtle hand. He knits his fingers together in his lap. “Well, it’s hard to explain.”

Crowley barks a laugh. “What hasn’t been hard to explain, lately?”

Aziraphale ignores him because the regency silver gears and cogs in the back of his old, angelic mind are busy churning out a reason for why Crowley’s flat felt _wrong_. He hits on something at last.

“No sense of love.”

That doesn’t seem to surprise Crowley. “Should there be?”

“I believe so.”

“But not every place has one, or has to have one,” Crowley reasons, “Or you wouldn’t have reacted so strongly to Tadfield’s…” he gestures again, “Tadfield’s… Tadfield’s what-have-you.”

“Aura,” Aziraphale suggests.

“You’d know.”

“Does Heaven have a sense of love?”

“Of course it does,” says Aziraphale quickly, too quickly, and Crowley raises an eyebrow almost unnaturally high.

“No,” Aziraphale finally admits. “Not even a small one. It’s--”

“Rather empty, I’d say. Soulless. ’Specially for a place supposed to be dealing with souls.”

Aziraphale seems noncommittal. “It’s clean, to be sure. I’m too…” and it’s his turn to wave a hand aimlessly, “Too _frumpy_ for the place. A bit.”

Despite the casual nature of the words and the gesture, Crowley takes it as a rather large confession, and turns to his counterpart in surprise. Seeing Aziraphale’s face, he rejects an “I’m sorry,” and opts for a dry, “You don’t say.” To his relief, Aziraphale cracks a smile, but it’s only passing acquaintances with his usual radiant grin.

A note; Aziraphale doesn’t have a ‘usual radiant grin.’ He has a ‘usual radiant grin’ around Crowley. He does, however, have a ‘usual radiant glare’ that he treats his customers with on most weekdays from about 9:30 or perhaps 10 am (while occasionally as early as 8) to about 3:30 pm (or earlier if something needs tending to). That ‘something’ is always either something about Crowley or something entirely made-up.

Or, it must be noted, something entirely made-up _about Crowley_ , but those are Aziraphale’s private sexual fantasies and we will not at the moment get into them. For Crowley’s private sexual fantasies, see the Angel and Demon Statue in his flat, which will actually become a topic of conversation in **three…**

“I don’t suppose you thought much of my decor,” Crowley remarks inadvisably. His mind is on the sketch of the Mona Lisa. Aziraphale’s mind is not.

“If you’re referring to the statue of what I presume is an eagle that you must have lifted from the church in which you visited me--”

“Ah--” Crowley cuts in.

“--I confess myself quite touched.”

“Ah,” Crowley cuts in again, “‘Visited’ you?”

Aziraphale shifts. “What terminology would you rather I use?” he snips.

**two…**

“Rescued,” Crowley suggests.

“A rescue from paperwork? An excuse to kill Nazis? How noble.”

“It _was_.”

Aziraphale opens his mouth, then shuts it. “Oh, I suppose you’re right.”

Crowley smiles wickedly--and pointedly--at him. “I came down the _aisle_ for you, angel. It was a _romantic affair_.”

“Oh, _for you_ , maybe.”

“Slow on the uptake, aren’t you, Angel? You can’t not have noticed how I took every excuse to see you. At no small risk to myself, I might add. At great risk to the soles of my shoes.”

“Shoes don’t have souls.”

“You know what I meant.”

**one…**

“Well, pardon me for being slightly repressed on account of not owning _life-size sexually explicit material resembling myself and you_.”

“Aaaah,” says Crowley, relishing the syllable, and tilts his head back to grin at the sky. “So you did see it.”

“Of course I saw it! Crowley, that--” he drops his voice to a whisper, “That-- _thing_ \--is huge.”

Crowley doesn’t even try to resist the urge to say “That’s what she said.” Aziraphale mutters something about heteronormativity.

“It’s not supposed to be us, though,” Crowley admits. “It’s, I don’t know. ‘Good and Evil Wrestling with Evil Triumphing.’ Or something.”

“Oh,” says Aziraphale, “I would have said ‘Good and Evil, um, Going At It, with Evil On Top.”

“Please,” says Crowley, “The pose depicted in that statue would make for very uncomfortable sex.”

“And you’d know, I suppose.”

“Na-a-ah, not really. Never been one for the physical sensations—er, temptations—myself.”

“Hm,” says Aziraphale eloquently. If he’s surprised, he gives no indication.

(He’s not surprised. How could he be? Take one look at Anthony J. “Can I Hear A Wahoo” Crowley and tell me that man’s had sex. You can’t. Crowley is a six thousand year old gay virgin, and that’s fine.)

(Aziraphale may or may not have fucked Oscar Wilde. That’s also fine.)

“Well,” says Crowley finally, “If you and I were to, um, Go At It, which isn’t a promise or anything, you would be on top, I think.”

This, to Aziraphale, doesn’t even register as anywhere near in the top one hundred oddest things Crowley’s said, or even anywhere near the top one hundred most romantic things Crowley’s said, but it is decidedly amusing, so the angel leans toward him, far too close, and starts to whisper something fond.

Crowley stares at Aziraphale over the rims of his sunglasses. Surely he isn't saying ‘jolly good’ to a proposition of sex?

He is. But there’s a wry twist at the corner of Aziraphale’s lips as he says it, a slow, cajoling, _teasing_ smirk, and it is absolutely paramount Crowley puts his mouth on the smirk Right Fucking Now before it vanishes, so he cups Aziraphale’s chin and does, squarely and passionately, on impulse, on the park bench, and in front of three passersby so heterosexual they’ve never even seen an episode of Star Trek.

It isn’t their first kiss, not by a long shot, and it isn’t their best kiss by an even longer shot, because there is too much saliva and “Crowley that is _not_ what you do with your tongue,” but it is thrilling and forbidden and _fun_ when Aziraphale murmurs “Crowley,” into Crowley’s mouth, so Crowley tugs on him and kisses him harder because for a moment he doesn’t care if anyone’s looking; not heaven nor hell nor humanity. But moments are just that—moments, brief—and soon they pull apart to become, once again, two supernatural entities chilling on a park bench, two feet apart though they are gay.

Aziraphale exhales shakily, high colour in his cheeks. “A bit public?”

“Yeah,” says Crowley. “PDA, that’s my side all the way. They’d give me a commendation, snogging furiously out here like that.”

“Surely not.”

“No, really,” Crowley protests. “They would! They’d be fine with me having a,” he makes more vague hand gestures, “Consort. Lover. Or whatever. But a friend? That’s far too human. A best friend? That’s far too close. Emotional ties and all that. Attachment. Can’t secure souls for Satan if my soul’s secured to someone else. Really, they’d be fine if I were fucking you, if it were just the sex.”

“Crowley, that’s vulgar.”

“Your tongue was in my mouth two minutes ago.”

Aziraphale concludes he’s been fairly beaten and acknowledges it sportingly. “I suppose it rather was.”

“Mhm,” Crowley agrees. “And aggressively, too. And it was wet, no offence. Felt good, though. For me. And for you, I presume?”

“Yes. Perfectly satisfactory. I,” he hesitates, but only briefly, “Like you very much.”

“And I you,” Crowley says gallantly. “This ‘being boyfriends’ business is quite rewarding. We don’t have to be embarrassed when we kiss each other now.”

Aziraphale thinks back to all the times he’s kissed Crowley—on the cheek, with oyster-scented breath in Rome, on the forehead, with syrup-scented breath in France, on the hand, clandestinely, on a snow-coated London night, and finally, chastely and shakily, on the face, on the lips, in the Blitz, just outside the bookshop after Crowley had driven him home from the church, with the wailing of a distant siren behind him and the light from the windows pouring out across them and the sound of his angelic heartbeat so desperately, passionately alive and ferocious he thought it would stop if he touched Crowley’s skin.

Crowley hadn’t kissed him back, not yet, not then, but he’d tilted his head and closed his eyes and let Aziraphale kiss him, let the angel pull him in and press his lips to his so softly he shivered and reached for him, and it was aching and slow and yet over so quickly that in the time it took Crowley’s eyes to flicker open, Aziraphale was inside his bookshop, and the door was shut.

Now, they can kiss every day, and they do. But they don’t live together.

Old habits die hard.

 

It may help to explain that the great unions and disunions of humanity are not caused by people being fundamentally compatible or non-compatible but by people being fundamentally—

No, not fundamentally. It isn’t about fundamentals so much as it is about choices.

Fundamentals can sod off, really. There’s never been a fundamental, in Crowley’s opinion, that can’t be fundamentally changed.

Aziraphale and Crowley make changes, make choices. And one of those choices is, for Aziraphale, Crowley. And, for Crowley, Aziraphale. They loved each other; they weren’t deluded. In The Beginning, they rather liked each other; then they _really_ liked each other, then rather loved each other, then were overwhelmed, until, one after the other, they weren’t so afraid anymore. They weren’t stupid for taking so long, or for learning so slowly. They were normal.

They were stupid for a number of other reasons, however. Aziraphale still thought tomatoes were poisonous, and Crowley still thought the existence of the Queen of England was an elaborate hoax.

“You would like to move in with me?” Crowley asks, and the lenses of his glasses must have lightened just slightly because Aziraphale can actually see hope in his eyes.

Old habits die hard, but they die.

“Yes,” he says finally, quietly, giving the words all the weight they want. He clears his throat. “If you get rid of the statue.”

“Aw, deal’s off, then,” begins Crowley. “It took forty days and forty nights to lug that thing to London--”

Aziraphale cuts him off. “I want it myself,” he says.

Crowley blinks.

“The eagle one?” he squeaks.

“No,” says Aziraphale patiently, “The, er, the sexy one. I want to put it in my bookshop. References to pornography seem to make customers leave very quickly. You’ll never guess who taught me that.” He lowers his voice to a giddy whisper. “ _Gabriel_.”

Crowley isn’t listening. He’s busy giving every neuron in his brain a good thumping. “Did I just hear you say the word ‘sexy’?”

Aziraphale nods soberly. “Yes.”

“Can I hear you say it again?”

“No.”

“I bet I can make you say it again. You know, _I’m_ sexy.”

Aziraphale neither confirms nor denies it but professes that, “It would take a lot more than your infernal wiles--including your flamboyant but clearly well-rehearsed saunter--to make me say the word ‘sexy’ again.”

Crowley snorts. “You just said it again.”

“Fuck.”

Time itself grinds to a shuddering stop. Crowley gapes, then turns on Aziraphale so fast he becomes the first snake ever to get whiplash. “Did I just hear you say the word ‘fuck’?”

Aziraphale practically glows as he turns a beneficent smile on the demon beside him. “No-one,” he says radiantly, patting him on the arm, “Will ever believe you.”

“God _dammit_ ,” Crowley spits, and then starts moaning, head turned heavenward, at last breaking the 418-year-old world record for “Most Dramatic Sound Ever Made.”

(It had been made by Richard Burbage as Hamlet, of course.)

“You’re even doing your self-congratulatory _shoulder-wiggle_ , aren’t you? You are,” he goes on, exchanging his moan for a gripe and griping with abandon, “You absolutely _are_.”

He unfreezes time and keeps on griping. Aziraphale keeps giving him comforting pats.

“There’s no saving you,” Crowley finally says, his full-bellied gripe tapering off into a slender, waifish whine. “Absolutely nothing for it, Angel. You’re as corrupted as they come.” He leans his head on Aziraphale’s shoulder and sighs, utterly spent. “But I forgive you.”

“Hm,” hums Aziraphale as he adjusts Crowley’s head so he’s sitting back upright, “A demon forgiving an angel, a tad unprecedented.”

Crowley shoots him an annoyed look and makes a great show of stretching, reaching up and back down again to drape an arm behind Aziraphale’s shoulders. “Unprecedented, that’s me. ’S a good thing to be, I think. Er, an evil thing to be?” He shrugs. “To be or not to be. Not like anybody’s keeping track.”

“Not like anybody’s keeping track,” Aziraphale agrees.

 

Memories are trickling in, he thinks. He keeps getting flashes of--of hope, of faith--of something a bit deeper than that. Flashes of anger--for the wrong reasons--for the right reasons--for the right reasons and the wrong reasons at the same time--time, time stopping, hands clasping, Adam’s eyes turning steely, his shoulders squaring off, his anger fighting Satan’s anger, and there was Crowley’s anger merging with Aziraphale’s own anger, anger and determination rising and falling and flaming like a bar of magnesium, like a holy sword, because if you feel anything you’ve never felt before, you never forget it, and Aziraphale hadn’t forgotten it at all, not really. Neither of them had.

They just hadn’t understood it.

But that was…

That was fine.

It _was_ , after all, a bit too much to understand, a bit too much to talk about. A bit too…

Well, you know. So I don’t have to say it.

 

Aziraphale turns to Crowley. “The statue.”

“You can have that one for your bookshop,” says Crowley. “The angel and demon fu--uh, wrestling. That’s yours, my treat, don’t bother to thank me, just don’t let the sun come up on you here. But I’m keeping the one from the church. It’s my second favourite, you know--thing, or--item--not an item--noun--my second favourite _noun_ that’s ever been in my flat.”

“Noun?” Aziraphale asks.

“Yeah,” says Crowley eloquently. “Word that’s not a pronoun--

“Used to identify any of a class of people, places, things, or ideas, in which case it’s a _common_ noun, or to name a particular one of these, in which case it’s a _proper_ \--”

“I get it, you read the dictionary.”

“Crowley,” says Aziraphale, mortally offended, “I _wrote_ the dictionary.” He adjusts his bowtie, then his collar. “I’m merely remarking on--questioning--why you chose the vague noun ‘noun’ over the simpler and more obvious noun ‘thing.’ And I’ve come to,” and he looks unbearably smug, “The rather lovely conclusion that it’s because your favourite thing that’s ever been in your flat is not a ‘thing’ at all, but rather--”

“ _You_ , yes, alright, it’s you, go on and tell the whole blessed world, why don’t you,” Crowley snaps.

Aziraphale’s mouth opens into a perfectly round _o_.

“I thought it was _you_ ,” he finally manages.

“Me?” Crowley asks, utterly disgusted. “Why would I like _me_?”

“Because I do, you idiot. I _love_ you, in fact. Do you want me to kiss you again? Would that convince you?” He interlaces his fingers again, sits back, and huffs.

“Well,” Crowley admits, “It might help.”

“Later,” suggests Aziraphale, in a tone of voice that somehow implies that, rather than kissing Crowley to reassure him he’s wonderful, he’ll pen an entire tome of all the reasons he loves him, and gleefully alphabetise it. “After we redecorate.”

“We,” Crowley points out.

“Yes, we. Don’t,” he says firmly, “Stop me now. I’m moving in with you.”

“And _I’m_ ,” says Crowley wearily, “A racing car passing by like Lady Godiva. I’m gonna go, go, go—”

“Home?” Aziraphale suggests.

“Yeah,” says Crowley, faintly.  “Home.”

He stands. Offers Aziraphale his hand.

Aziraphale takes it, glum. “It’s still so dark in there.”

Crowley already knows that by the time they get back, the flat will already have sprouted several new windows, bookshelves, tartan sofas, gramophones that only play Queen songs, and possibly even flowers.

“Nah,” he says, and smiles. “Not anymore.”


End file.
